Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx Monitor Review

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has a simple design that's almost identical to the Acer Nitro XF252Q. It has thin borders on three sides and a stand with a round base.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx's build quality is decent, very similar to the Acer Nitro XF252Q. It's entirely plastic except for the stand's column, which is metal. The stand is sturdy, and the monitor doesn't wobble much. However, there's some flex on the back, and the buttons feel a bit cheap. Overall, it doesn't feel particularly premium, but there are no issues with the construction.

The ergonomics are excellent. It allows for all manner of adjustments so that you can place the screen easily at your optimal viewing position. Like the Acer Nitro XF252Q, it has a base plate that can rotate freely within the plastic enclosure, allowing it to rotate a full 360 degrees. Other than the branding and the airflow vents, the back is relatively plain. There's a small clip at the bottom of the stand that serves as basic cable management.

The stand consists of a simple cylindrical column with a round base. The base doesn't take up much desk space, and you can still put things on top of it. It supports the monitor well, and there's very little wobble.

You can find the controls on the screen's right backside. There are four buttons and a joystick to power the monitor On/Off and navigate the on-screen menu.

• Power cord
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• User guide

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has a mediocre contrast ratio that results in blacks looking grayish in dark environments, which is typical for IPS panels. It's very close to the advertised 1000:1 contrast; however, this can vary between individual units. If you want a budget-friendly monitor with a VA panel and higher contrast, then check out the Samsung Odyssey G3 S24AG30.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video above is provided for reference only.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has great SDR peak brightness. It's very consistent across different content and bright enough to combat glare in most lighting conditions. Surprisingly, it's significantly higher than the advertised 250 cd/m².

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'User' Picture Mode with Brightness set to max.

The HDR peak brightness is okay. It's again very consistent when displaying different scenes. However, even though it's very close to the required 400 cd/m² for its advertised DisplayHDR 400 certification, it isn't enough to make specular highlights stand out. It's almost identical to the SDR peak brightness, so HDR content doesn't look much different from SDR.

We measured the HDR peak brightness in the 'HDR Mode' Picture Mode with Brightness set to max.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has excellent horizontal viewing angles. Images remain accurate when viewed from the side, great for sharing content or playing co-op games.

Good vertical viewing angles. Images remain accurate even if you mount the monitor above eye level.

The gray uniformity is good. While the edges are darker than the rest, there's hardly any noticeable dirty screen effect in the center, which is great for browsing the web or watching sports.

Black uniformity is sub-par, but this can vary between units. There's some clouding in the center, as well as some backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges of the screen. That said, this is only noticeable when viewing dark scenes in a dark environment.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has great accuracy before calibration. It has an sRGB Mode that aims to lock the colors to the sRGB color space so that they aren't oversaturated, but some colors are still slightly inaccurate. Luckily, the color temperature is very close to the 6500K target, but gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve well as dark scenes are too dark, while bright scenes are over-brightened.

You can use the sRGB Mode with any of the picture modes. It doesn't fully lock all of the picture settings, but if you change some settings like Brightness while you're using the sRGB Mode, it disables the mode and reverts to its defaults. The color accuracy is still good if you don't use the sRGB Mode, but some colors are slightly more oversaturated.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has exceptional accuracy after calibration. White balance is nearly perfect, and the remaining color inaccuracies aren't visible to the naked eye. The color temperature is still in the same ballpark, just a little warmer than our 6500K target. Gamma is much improved, but both dark and bright scenes are now slightly too bright.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has an excellent SDR color gamut. It covers the entire sRGB color space used in most content, and it has good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, mostly used in photo editing.

Excellent color volume. It only has trouble displaying dark colors due to its low contrast ratio.

Unfortunately, the Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx can't display a wide color gamut for HDR. It only has decent coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space, and its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 is sub-par.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has a sub-par HDR color volume, mostly due to its lack of a wide color gamut. It has trouble displaying both bright and dark colors at different luminance levels.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has good reflection handling. Combined with the monitor's great peak brightness, you shouldn't have any visibility issues in well-lit environments.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has decent text clarity. You can improve it by enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) as it makes letters look more fleshed out, especially diagonal lines such as on the R and N.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has exceptional gradient handling. There's only a tiny amount of banding in the reds, but it shouldn't be noticeable in regular content. It's advertised as having a 6-bit+Hi-FRC panel; however, it accepts a 10-bit signal without any issues.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has a native refresh rate of 144Hz, overclocked up to 165Hz. It comes overclocked out of the box, so there's no setting to change. If you want a monitor with an even higher refresh rate, check out the ASUS TUF Gaming VG258QM.

It supports FreeSync to reduce screen tearing and is compatible with NVIDIA's G-SYNC as well, but the latter only works over a DisplayPort connection. Enabling FreeSync disables the overdrive setting and locks Ultra-Low Latency to 'On'. It doesn't prevent you from turning on BFI; however, turning BFI on disables VRR.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has exceptional response time at its max refresh rate, resulting in almost no blur trail behind fast-moving objects. Enabling VRR disables any of the overdrive settings, and if you disable VRR, the 'Normal' setting performs similarly to when VRR is on. However, turning the overdrive setting off also results in less overshoot than 'Normal'.

The response time at 120Hz is great. With VRR enabled, motion look great as there's minimal blur. If you disable VRR, setting the overdrive setting to 'Off' results in the best motion handling as there's less overshoot than 'Normal'.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has a decent response time at 60Hz. There's a lot of overshoot when you have VRR enabled, resulting in inverse ghosting. If this bothers you, disabling VRR and the overdrive setting results in no overshoot and good motion handling.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has an optional backlight strobing feature, also known as black frame insertion (BFI). The setting to enable it is called VRB and you can set it to 'Normal' or 'Extreme', depending on the intensity of how you prefer it. You can also change the overdrive setting at the same time. You can see photos of the combinations of the two settings below. The above photo and graph are with BFI on 'Extreme' and the overdrive on 'Normal'.

The backlight is entirely flicker-free, which helps minimize image duplication and reduce eye strain.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has an exceptionally low input lag, resulting in an extremely responsive gaming experience. It's slightly higher at 60Hz, which is typical, but it shouldn't be noticeable to most people.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has a decent resolution and size. The smaller screen size makes it easier to see the entire screen for better environmental awareness in some games; however, it feels less immersive. It might also feel a bit cramped for productivity, especially if you like having multiple windows placed side-by-side. The 1080p resolution is very common for a screen this size and helps achieve a higher frame rate for smoother gameplay, but the resulting pixel density might still be too low for some.

This monitor works well with the PS5. It downscales a 4k image, which results in a sharper image than a native 1080p signal, but because it lacks HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, you can't use it for 4k @ 120Hz gaming. HDR isn't automatically enabled on the monitor with the PS5, and you have to manually enable it.

There aren't many issues using this monitor with the Xbox Series X|S. Like with the PS5, it downscales a 4k signal, and because the Xbox only supports HDR in 4k, you need to use that if you want HDR. 1440p @ 60Hz also works, but only if you manually enable it with the console's HDMI override settings, which also disables VRR.

Unfortunately, there are some issues when using this monitor with a MacBook. It doesn't always recover from sleep mode right away, and when it does, windows don't go back to their original position. VRR and HDR work well in-game, but there's some flickering with VRR enabled if the refresh rate is around 48Hz. You have to manually enable HDR from the monitor's OSD; it doesn't automatically switch.

The Acer Nitro XF243Y Pbmiiprx has a few additional features, including:

• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair.
• Low Blue Light: Blue light filter to help reduce eye strain.
• DDC/CI: Lets you change the monitor's settings through software.
• Frame rate counter: Adds an overlay that shows the current frame rate.